You are confused about how defining the goal in dollars makes “progress” more easily visible. Scroll my video to any point you like: in any given moment a $10 pledge makes up the same percentage of the goal you set out to reach in both proposals. The fact that you’re operate in the same currency just makes you spot the influence more easily.
—dollar-goal—
a $10 pledge makes up 10% of a $100 total. (people? average pays?)
a $1 pledge makes up 1% of a $100 total. (people? average pays?)
—crowd-goal—
a $10 pledge makes up 10% of a goal of 100 people (average pays $1 ~ total is 100$)
a $10 pledge makes up 25% of a goal of 100 people (average pays $0.3)
a $1 pledge makes up 1% of a goal of 100 people (average pays $1 ~ total is $100)
a $1 pledge makes up 50% of a goal of 100 people (average pays $0.01)
Do you see how defining the goal has an impact on what you call influence? The given numbers are unrealistic because they are too small, but reveal the underlying problem. It all only makes sense if we agree on the same assumptions, because if the goal is defined differently $1 and $10 are not the same in all circumstances. But to the degree we can compare you get the exact same numbers.
Then you are demonstrably wrong. Both proposals generate the same amount of money for the project at any stage of comparison.
Consider a total possible pool of 10 patrons who have $10 (but are not necessarily going to pledge all they have).
If a single patron pledges $10 and the others all pledge $1:
With a crowd-based goal of 10, the total is $19
With a dollar-based goal of $19, the total is $19
But with the dollar-based goal of $100, the total funding is 19% of $19 = $3.61
The dollar-based goal can’t know the future, so there’s no reason they’d necessarily set a $19 goal. Anything higher will result in less funding… unless the higher goal and the matching it gives inspires more people to pledge higher than $1, in which case it will get more funding than the crowd-based goal.
Again, this doesn’t say which is better, and I’m not sure (which is why I want more testing). But these are not identical situations mathematically unless we pick the exact points where they happen to match.
You’re right. This is what I repeatedly tried to hammer home: It isn’t really possible to compare 1:1 in all cases. We can only roughly do that in most and very accurately in some. But to the degree that we CAN compare them they are identical, pointing at the examples that we CAN NOT compare 1:1 and detecting tendencies in THOSE is – fallacious. (also those conclusions can cut both ways making them even more useless)
When I talk about 0% and 100% yielding the same goals I intentionally picked ones that CAN be compared very easily.
And If you ever so slightly dare to change that presumption you leave the area of an objective comparison. This is hillarious.
You literally continue to show that patrons in one case just start paying less, dropping the pledges from $10 to $1. And in the other case you just say “some pay less… that’s okay too, and we still have funding of a partial goal”
This is gold.
What if I decide paying less in your case is that they pay $0.1
each? Not fair – so lets make it fair and say the pledges drop from $10 to $1. Suddenly the $100 goal would only result in a drumroll $10 outcome, same as the other.
Sure, but picking the specific points where they meet isn’t helping us to map out the range of differences in terms of where they could lead. Put another way: yes we can agree that there are points that are the same. But why are you opposed to discussing the differences (which do indeed exist)?
Your argument that differences can be ignored because we could make up whatever rhetorical numbers applies just as well to not doing crowdmatching. We could say that unilateral donations are identical to crowdmatching because we could create numbers where the same donations happen with or without crowdmatching. That does show that crowdmatching is really just a framing itself in a sense. But it’s still useful to discuss it and to develop it.
Let’s assume we won’t hit 100% by the next crowdmatch (which is likely situation), this is the key point. To be doing crowdmatching, we’re thinking there is a pool of patrons (and maybe also pledge-increases) that remains untapped. The 100% point is the least interesting. The whole question is what happens as we’re building toward it.
So, the other pledges that will be there at this month’s crowdmatch point are $X total without my pledge. And I look at this and am considering adding a higher-than minimum pledge. In crowd-based mechanism, the increase the project gets because of my pledge is less than it would be in a dollar-based mechanism.
This is a usable comparison, a simple mathematical fact for any one patron making a pledge decision. This should be discussed as to the ramifications.
I’m not picking. This applies to every step between 0% and 100%. Test it.
I quote myself to give you the answer again:
It does not apply just as well. The fact that a mechanism has a final say is the first big difference, and then there is the question of how exactly that mechanism works. That’s literally what I’m discussing here.
You on the other hand insist that it is a good idea to bring in irrelevant, but related questions like: Why do people pledge? What could make them consider to pledge more? – questions that are important and not to dismiss, generally. But they apply to unilateral pledging as well as crowdmatching and don’t add to the discussion about mecahnism 1.1.
Congratulations to applying your bias. What is the reason you assume a change dollars per pledge and not a new pledge with the same value popping in? (wich is a corresponding way of influencing the set premise). Or what about this: What If you chose to reduce an existing pledge to the minimum? – suddenly the dollar-goal is much more vulnerable to that behavior.
Do you just assume that’s never going to happen? New people never join at low levels, and existing pledges never are diminished? What else? Do we have other hard constraints you just invent for comparisons sake? There are thousands – but I don’t care about them.
I don’t argue that way for a good reason: The entire WHAT–IF–GAME is boring to play. Of course you can twiddle around within the space of error margin that opens up due to the non-equivalence of dollar-goal and crowd-goal. But what do you get out of this mind game?
That’s the key point I’m making. Given nothing else in the world changing and not being at the 100% point of a goal, I’m only comparing the mechanism effect of my one pledge being larger or smaller:
crowd-based goal: Everyone else gives an unchanged amount regardless of any change in my pledge size
dollar-based goal: Any increase in my pledge results in increased dollars from other patrons, and decrease in my pledge results in decreased dollars from other patrons
There is no bias, there’s nothing outside the mechanism, there’s nothing speculative, this is not a mind-game in the slightest. I’m talking about a core difference between the output of two different mechanisms and how they respond to a specific number being changed.
Can you please recognize the fact of this mathematical difference, and can we please discuss the ramifications of the difference?
@mray the thing here is, you proposed a crowd-size goal in this thread, but i haven’t seen any argument for choosing it.
You argue that they are the same and that is true with the assumptions you allow, so why should we choose a crowd-size goal then instead of a dollar goal?
Can you please post a list with arguments for a crowd-size goal?
This looks like progress. We seem indeed to agree that neither mechanism has an actual edge when it comes to measurable objective benefits and can start exploring their true differences that boil down to all sorts of:
FRAMING:
things that come to my mind are…
counting in humans is more personal, direct, emotional and approachable than summing up the content of their purses
expressing a goal in terms of a “we”, a group, a team, a crowd you can be part of – is the better invitation than pointing to an amount of currency and ask others to add more onto that.
higher-tier patrons share their extra leverage with lower-tier patrons, making the community even more inviting especially for lowest-tier patrons.
The crowd metric is closer to our values
Crowdmatching is all about what happens when people come together to bring change to the world, and that is much more than the resulting money goals at the end of the day.
“I’m in!” is a statement that makes more sense with a crowd goal.
PEOPLE > MONEY
…If money is all you want - look for venture capital or a bank!
CONS:
I see how from the projects perspective, crowd goals add an extra calculation and a bit of fuzziness. But for a project, that is a reasonable price for having an extra source of revenue. Projects perspective generally play a subordinated role here: our main goal is finding best ways to get patrons. Succeeding with that will make projects most probably follow.
I still strongly disagree with that, but ignore it for the moment, so we can make progress. Maybe we don’t have to agree fully to continue.
In general, counting in humans is more personal and emotional. See how Youtubers beg for subscribers: “Join the X army and become part of the family of angry gamers. And don’t forget to hit the bell icon or it will be sad”.
But when it comes to funding, a dollar goal is more approachable (the patrons pay with money themselves and not with humans).
A dollar goal is also more direct, since you don’t have to calculate the actual goal with the average (do we even show that to the patrons?). The actual goal (the money the project needs) is the dollar goal!
In the end, developers and servers will be payed with money and not with humans and patrons know that. Don’t obfuscate that. It feels intransparent and dishonest.
Yes. You can do that when having a money goal: “1237 patrons have pledget to give 2000$ together of the goal of 5000$. Join the Crowd and help to reach the goal!”
I don’t understand what that means.
So, people with less money would rather join when everyone has the same impact on reaching the goal (1) instead of when some have a higher impact (1-limit)? So they dislike when we come closer to the goal??? Maybe they appreciate someone with more money than them joining. (We want them too, right?) With more money pledged we get closer to the actual goal (funding a project), so when the mechanism reflects that, it is just transparent and shows that more money has more impact. I don’t think it helps to obfuscate that.
I still claim: With a dollar goal patrons have a higher motivation to give more than the minimum level, because that brings us closer to the goal. They want to reach the goal, that’s why they donated in the first place. So with a dollar goal, the average donation will be higher than with a crowd-size goal. That means we can reach a financial goal (funding) with less people.
When you don’t trust the math, call it framing or whatever you like.
I agree. But a dollar goal with crowdmatching is also in line with the values. And our mission is to fund FLO. When we achieve that more efficiently with a dollar goal, we should choose that.
How? I can say “I’m in!” when joining with a dollar goal. It’s still a crowd and we can focus on that in communication.
Again, how does that make sense in the context of funding FLO projects?
Can you make a full sentence?
I would say:
Project goal (e.g. pay dev with money) > funding goal (collect needed money) > people (give money)
So money is more important than people, but what the project will achieve with that money (FLO) is more important than money.
You will think: HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT???
But funding is about money and trying to hide that will hurt our mission.
It’s about money in all three steps. Calculate that to people 2 times is more complicated and forcing projects and patrons to think what a patron is worth might even be problematic. That is not the case when saying “The crowd of X people give X together”. Everyone is doing their part to reach the goal.
If people is all you want, go on Facebook and beg for likes!
Same for patrons that want to know how much money do they actually need and how much do they get already!
I don’t want to support projects that don’t show that directly. (But i still do when the project is important to me)
I’m not going to address all your points. What I overall am getting here is a series of examples that framing works both ways. I agree. That’s the nature of framing, saying that statement X can also be stated differently isn’t only not surprising, it actually is something I go to great lengths to make clear from the get go. But we don’t even seem to come to an agreement over that, as it seems.
You can call it framing or whatever, i don’t care at this point. I just want to find a conclusion from this long discussing and make a good decision for our project.
It looks like we have explored the ideas in all detail and will just not agree what we think is better. That’s something i can accept. Thanks for the discussion!
@mray and @davidak, I STRONGLY suggest that any time you two are at an impasse, you switch to discussing in German. We have enough communication issues when it is just one person who is not a native English speaker…
However, it would make the thread hard to follow for those who don’t speak German, so I would suggest using a separate thread (either a public topic or private message), or hiding the Deutsch part inside a [details] section — you can find the template for adding one of these in the gear menu:
This thread is long; it especially has a lot of back-and-forth without making any progress in the discussion (lots of talking past one another); and has been quiet for two weeks. This makes it hard to catch up on and contribute to (there are many points unanswered, but it’s hard to know which ones are still contentious.
I think we should end discussion here and continue in other topics.
good idea. and we actually had a discussion about this topic in german. it was easier for me, but we ended up with the same situation. we where not able to find a consensus which option is better. we could try again and see if we have understood us correctly until now… i try to find a common ground, but it is very hard here
yes, that’s the problem. and it don’t help to repeat the same point over and over again
I think we could make progress when others would contribute. This two post seem relevant
I even would like to end this thread with just one argument to show that this idea don’t make sense:
The purpose of funding is to get money. A project has to do budgeting to see how much money they need to achieve their mission. Using that amount as a funding goal (dollar goal) is the obvious choice.
I haven’t seen a single funding campaign that asks for something other than money. It just don’t make sense!
I was going to post in that thread, but ended up sending my [long] message to @mray privately instead – I’ll post a shorter version publicly later based on whether it is helpful in moving the conversation forward.
Actually making a decision: in a meeting or a new topic, once we have resolved the things above and decided the meta question of how to proceed if we cannot find alignment on this.
with a crowd-size goal a patron has less fine grained impact on the matching rate. they can only join (1) or leave (0) the crowd while with a dollar goal, the range is minimum to our limit. that also means that patrons who pledge a higher amount than the minimum has a higher impact on the matching. we want that impact, since it means more funding. and it relates well to the role of patrons that contribute more. (more funding = more impact) for success, we need patrons that contribute more than the minimum, so the mechanism should have an incentive for that! but it’s important that our limit is low enough, so the project can afford to loose high impact patrons
i think that are the advantages and disadvantages we have to talk about when discussing a crowd-size vs. dollar goal. and no, @mray, that is not framing!
(we are stuck with that topic until we have a decision)
You are putting things from the left pocket to the right pocket. Switching what you call “fine grained impact” from the matcher to the one being matched, raising questions like:
What kind of “impact” is that – how is it even useful or matters either way?
Why is it more useful for the matcher to begin with?
What “quantities” of matching do we talk about here?
If you think there are advantages – show them. If you can’t, maybe you were talking about framing all way long.
Because I agree on all your statements that underline how we want positive impact and more funding. But if there is no tangible fact or anything more than just a different way of looking at it – it is only framing.
I think I have met the burden of proof how both ways to express the goal are almost entirely synonymous. Show where things are wrong. You can falsify the claim by giving an example where it would not apply.
We have 10 patrons in the crowd which give 10$ each.
We could have a 10 patrons crowd-size goal or 100$ money goal. It does not matter. Both are 100% reached.
Now one patron decides to give only 5$.
Let’s see what happens.
With a crowd size goal:
rate = number of patrons / crowd-size goal x 100
rate = 10 / 10 x 100
rate = 100%
So the project gets 95$.
calculation
9x 10
+
1x 5
With a money goal:
rate = total pledges / money goal x 100
rate = 95$ / 100$ x 100
rate = 95%
So the project gets 90.25$.
calculation
9 x 95% of 10 = 9x 9.5 = 85.5
+
1x 95% of 5 = 4.75
So, with the same input, you get a different output, because the equation is different. In one case is the patron matched, in the other case their pledge.
You can argue that we can’t compare the goals, they are not the same, but that does not matter here. The fact is, in this example, the patrons action has in impact on the matching with a money goal and does not have an impact in the crowd-size goal.
You can say, with a money goal:
“When you give more, everyone gives more”
(Which is the same dynamic as with matching donations of a wealthy philanthropist. We know that that work as motivation!)
While with a crowd-size goal:
“When you join, everyone gives more”
The impact that the patron has on the matching rate. You can call it crowdmatching effect. This impact exist with both goals.
I argue that the impact is more fine grained with a money goal, because a patron can decide to set a lower pledge when they are unhappy with the project.
more detailed explanation
When they have pledged 10$ before, they could decide on 9$, 8$, 7$, … 1$ (when we allow custom amounts).
With a crowd-size goal, an unhappy patron can only leave the crowd, which mean, we have lost them for funding.
Maybe this is why you are so confused.
You can’t set up a scenario and then …set it up again very quickly introducing a slight change. You now just replace the old with a new scenario. Think about this: why didn’t you just start with THAT scenario right ahead - why do you have to build first and then tweak it? This should be a hint. You now have this scenario:
9 giving 10$ and 1 giving 5$
What happened is that the perfect analogy of both goals being identical (at first) suddenly falls apart. Suddenly one mechanism slaps a 100% tag on a scenario that the other one slaps a 95% tag on. Effectively undermining the very reason why you chose the simple 10x10 numbers in the first place. This completely de-validates every assumption you build on top of that example, rendering all subsequent calculations irrelevant. You no longer compare two comparable scenarios. From here on you can’t expect to reach sensible conclusions anymore.
Or, here, wrap your head around this:
Why not make one patron just leave entirely? – It would just tweak a 5$ loss to a 10$ loss - right? You just have done it before, certainly you can do it again. Why do you think suddenly everything fits nicely together again when both projects are at 90%, and what has that to do with the fact that it makes no sense to express a crowd goal as “9,5 people”?
Please give this more thought. When you want to compare, you need to consider that the crowd-goal assumes the average pledge of a patron as the “worth” of one patron and may often not be correct in doing that, assuming too much or too little. But on average it is always correct, by definition. Even if you manage to set up an example that highlights selective errors.
– suddenly the dollar-goal is much more vulnerable to that behavior.
We seem indeed to agree that neither mechanism has an actual edge when it comes to measurable objective benefits and can start exploring their true differences that boil down to all sorts of:
